Why Sitecore is an ideal CMS for professional services firms

Like in nearly every industry, professional services firms like consulting firms, legal, accounting and taxation firms, are finding that technology solutions can allow them to operate more effectively and efficiently in communicating with their customers and prospects. Choosing the right technology solutions, though, can be a fairly daunting task.

If we consider the case of choosing a Content Management System (CMS)--generally viewed as the foundation of the firm’s marketing technology stack--it becomes clear that there many variables, options, features, and functionality to take into account. So which is the best solution for your firm?

Our team has analyzed some of the leading CMS providers, including Adobe Experience Manager (AEM), Oracle WebCenter Content, and Sitecore. Time and time again, we have chosen Sitecore for our clients--and for a range of reasons.

In this article, I'll explain nine reasons why we choose Sitecore as the CMS of choice when partnering with law firms.

1. Superior content management experience

The Sitecore platform is built to meet the increasing needs of an enterprise-level content management for modern marketing teams. The platform offers a sophisticated asset system that allows you to quickly manage and deploy content across different pages, websites, and customer experience flows.

“A Sitecore advantage is that it specifically built
its tools to be part of the same offering
— unlike Adobe, IBM, and Oracle, which have had
to integrate acquired technology — so the user
experience is consistent and workflows are
integrated.” Forrester Research

While Adobe and Oracle also offer CMS platforms with similar content management capabilities, the functionality found in Sitecore is fragmented across various products or parts of the system--making it more difficult to manage from a top-down perspective.

2. Multi-lingual support

Many law firms operate on a global scale or within various communities and need a website that is extendable and adaptable to meet the needs of these different audiences. Sitecore is a leader in offering multilingual support and their simple content management process allows firms to easily and intuitively manage multiple versions of the same pages and content, translated into various languages.

3. Clear content ownership and approval workflows

With multiple stakeholders and managers involved in your firm’s website, Sitecore provides huge value in its content versioning system, which allows multiple parties to make and track revisions to the same document or content asset. The system automatically maintains and audit trail, which makes reviewing and comparing different versions a snap.

And all content can be routed through pre-defined approval workflows to ensure that the right people have reviewed and approved each piece. This not only simplifies complicated content ownership roles, but fast tracks the change process for documents that require frequent changes in content, citations, or legal references.

4. Data-driven, 1:1 content delivery

Sitecore is built to provide a framework for firms to achieve the goal of Single Customer View (SCV), wherein which all of a customer’s data and interactions are tracked and integrated into a single database. Sitecore is able to integrate and make use of this data in real time, serving up personalized, relevant website content to each visitor on a 1:1 scale.

Sitecore, more than any other available CMS, has the flexibility and extendability to make this process work for firms using a variety of database solutions and marketing automation tools. The API framework for Sitecore allows firms to create customized systems that manage and move data in exactly the way that works best for internal processes and organizational structure.

5. Mobile optimized tools and administration

The Sitecore platform not only allows your firm to quickly and easily manage customer-facing mobile websites, but it also allows for your staff to access and approve content on the go.

Your team can operate more efficiently by collaborating from mobile devices and tablets anywhere in the world. This eliminates scheduling conflicts and delays created by travel schedule or time differences and keeps things moving forward, even if everyone is not on the same schedule or in the same time zone

6. Multi-site and microsite licensing and deployment

Using multiple websites or microsites can be an incredibly effective marketing tactic. It allows you to create branded experiences that exist outside of your regular website and to focus attention and measurement on a specific audience segment or customer lifecycle stage.

Your Sitecore license can be used across multiple domains and allows you to quickly build and deploy microsites and alternative web properties as they fit in with your marketing strategy.

7. Social media management and integration

Sitecore comes out of the box ready and able to integrate various social media channels and content directly into other digital assets, allowing firms to seamlessly tie together their social presence with the experience on their desktop and mobile sites.

Custom integrations can also be created to extend this functionality or customize the way that it works within the CMS or management workflow.

8. Intuitive and powerful search functionality

Many firms manage tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, or even millions of content assets. With such a high volume of content, the difference in search functionality offered by different CMS options becomes very apparent. Sitecore offers an industry-leading search that allows both content managers and clients to quickly find and make use of the assets they need at that moment.

Other CMS solutions have limited or less-functional search capabilities that may not meet the needs of high-volume, enterprise firms, and their clients.

9. Leading multi-device support

Increasingly, CMS vendors have focused on retooling their offering to become more friendly for use--both from for clients and for firms--on a range of devices. Mobile phones, tablets, and laptops of all sizes are now part of the day-to-day business and many vendors have made strides in improving the experience created on each.

But Sitecore is a leader in this area, providing a seamless and robust experience, regardless of the device.

Although each of our clients has a unique set of
needs and requirements in their CMS
implementation, we come back to Sitecore
time and time again in large part due to its
extensive customizability and extendability.

With our expertise in technology implementation, we are able to mold the Sitecore CMS to meet specific needs and deliver the desired results more precisely than out-of-the-box functionality or integration.

For this reason, we believe Sitecore represents the best choice for most professional services firms looking to create a perfectly tailored technology solution for managing their digital assets and customer experience across channels.